If you’re a fan of Amazon’s ecosystem, whether that’s asking your Alexa speaker to tell you about the weather or compulsively checking the video feed from your Ring doorbell, then it makes sense to expand and build onto the system. It’s always easier to keep to one ecosystem as much as you can with smart home gear, letting you stick to a single app and single subscription if you decide to invest in one.

While we’ve liked Ring’s cameras and home security products fine enough, they’re hard to recommend at the top of our guides since Ring is reintroducing a policy to enable local law enforcement to request footage directly from Ring users. It’s up to you if that’s something you want to invest in, and if you already have Ring products, it might make the most sense to continue adding onto that ecosystem than diving into a new one.

No matter the reason, if you’re looking to add a Ring product to your home, don’t get one without using our Ring coupon codes to get it for a better price.

50% Off Ring Cameras, Doorbells, and Outdoor Cameras

Ring is running a deal all month long with up to 50% off different products and bundles. You can get all kinds of Ring cameras and security accessories for a variety of discounts, from Ring’s video doorbell to indoor and outdoor cameras.

Save $150 on Wired Doorbell Pro and Floodlight Cam

If you’re looking for an outdoor combination, you can get both Ring’s Starter Pro Kit, which includes the Wired Doorbell Pro and Floodlight Cam, for $150 off the set. It’s a great option if you want to get a camera feed both at your doorstep and over your garage.

Bundle and Save on Ring Whole Home Basic Kit

Looking to deck out your whole home? Ring’s Whole Home Basic Kit is also discounted for $59 off. It includes Ring’s Outdoor Cam Plus Battery, Battery Doorbell, and the Alarm Security Kit, so you can get everything from video surveillance around the outside of your home and sensors to pair with the alarm system for inside of it.

Ring has a variety of subscription plans, which you’ll want since there’s no option to locally store your video footage. That means in order to play any video back to see what set off the camera or who was at the door, you’ll need one of these plans. Here’s a quick breakdown. Basic Ring Plan: Get the basics with video event playback and smart notifications for one camera. $5 per month or $50 per year. Standard Plan: All the core Ring experience with enhanced features for all your devices. $10 per month, or $100 per year. Premium Plan: Ring home the best of the best with our most advanced AI and recording features. $20 per month or $200 per year.

Stay Connected With $29 Off Pet Basic Kit + Pet Tag

Ring has a pet package you can get for a discount, too. You’ll get both Ring’s Indoor Cam and the Pet Tag, which has a QR code that lets anyone who finds your pet scan it and get your information to contact you. It’s 50% off right now, so if you’re looking for new tags and a camera to keep an eye on your favorite furry companion, this is your moment.

Mobile connectivity across the UK is becoming faster and more responsive on average; a marked gap still persists between the quality of experience in urban and rural areas; and the gap between the best and worst-performing local authorities remains significant, according to research from Ookla.

The analyst’s Speedtest Intelligence report for 2025 takes an overview of mobile network performance across the UK, focusing on outcomes at local authority level and how those outcomes have changed over time.

The study was based on millions of samples from mobile devices connected to a cellular network, comparing results from Q1–Q3 2025 with the same period in 2024. For each local authority, the report considered not only typical speeds, but also the experience of slower connections, and the relationship between population density and mobile outcomes. At UK and country (nation) level, it drew on national aggregate metrics (2025 to date) for the UK, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Fundamentally, the research found that population density correlates strongly with better outcomes, and that practically, the findings illuminate the urban-rural digital divide, showing that where you live in the UK largely dictates your mobile experience.

Analysis of local authority outcomes revealed what Ookla called the “stark” extent of regional variation in and across nations in the UK. Despite the general upward shift in the overall local authority distribution over the past year across key mobile performance indicators, the range remains large and many rural local authority areas are still stuck with not-spots despite the progress of the government’s shared rural network (SRN) scheme. Areas that were strong performers in 2024 generally remained strong, and many of the weakest authorities in 2024 still sit near the bottom of the distribution in 2025.

On a country level, UK mobile performance improved notably between 2024 and 2025, with the national median download speed rising from approximately 55.02Mbps to 63.03Mbps. This represented a year-on-year increase of around 15%. Median upload speeds inched up from 7.80Mbps to 8.21Mbps, while median latency improved marginally from 52ms to 50ms.

England and Northern Ireland saw the strongest gains, while Wales remained the slowest nation and Scotland’s median slipped from 49.13 to 46.05Mbps despite improvements in several local authorities. Overall, though, the UK rates badly compared with European peers such as Germany and the Republic of Ireland.

Drilling deeper, the study showed that the gap between local authorities remained stark. In Q1–Q3 2025, median speeds ranged from just over 10Mbps in the Shetland Islands to just over 100Mbps in Leicester. Around 28% of local authorities had fewer than 60% of test samples meeting a 25Mbps download threshold, indicating persistently poor connectivity for many in the UK.

Including the aforementioned Leicester, top performers included Nottingham, Derby, Bridge of Don, Thurrock and Stoke-on-Trent. These areas typically combine median download speeds in the mid-80s to 100Mbps, roughly three-quarters or more of samples reaching 25Mbps, and relatively strong results even in the slowest 10th percentile (generally around 8–11Mbps).

In addition to the Shetland Islands, the country’s weakest performers included the Isle of Anglesey, Fermanagh and Omagh, Denbighshire, Pembrokeshire, Orkney, and Cornwall. These areas have median download speeds mostly in the mid-teens to low-20s – excluding the Shetland Islands – with less than half of samples reaching 25Mbps and 10th-percentile speeds typically in the 1.5–3Mbps range, highlighting large not-spots for a significant share of users there.

Looking at the companies driving the industry, the study noted that heavy capital spending by the UK’s operators was driving improved outcomes. It added that the UK remains one of only a handful of countries in Europe and globally where at least three operators have “aggressively” deployed 5G standalone across a significant footprint.

Virgin Media O2 has already reported 70% population coverage and BT/EE boasts a similar level. VodafoneThree has committed to invest £11bn in its UK network over the next decade, including £1.3bn of capex in year one.

Students can take many possible routes through MIT’s curriculum, which can zigag through different departments, linking classes and disciplines in unexpected ways. With so many options, charting an academic path can be overwhelming, but a new tool called NerdXing is here to help.

The brainchild of senior Julianna Schneider and other students in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Undergraduate Advisory Group (UAG), NerdXing lets students search for a class and see all the other classes students have gone on to take in the past, including options that are off the beaten track.

“I hope that NerdXing will democratize course knowledge for everyone,” Schneider says. “I hope that for anyone who’s a freshman and maybe hasn’t picked their major yet, that they can go to NerdXing and start with a class that they would maybe never consider — and then discover that, ‘Oh wait, this is perfect for this really particular thing I want to study.’”

As a student double-majoring in artificial intelligence and decision-making and in mathematics, and doing research in the Biomimetic Robotics Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Schneider knows the benefits of interdisciplinary studies. It’s a part of the reason why she joined the UAG, which advises the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing’s leadership as it advances education and research at the intersections between computing, engineering, the arts, and more.

Through all of her activities, Schneider seeks to make people’s lives better through technology.

“This process of finding a problem in my community and then finding the right technology to solve that — that sort of approach and that framework is what guides all the things I do,” Schneider says. “And even in robotics, the things that I care about are guided by the sort of skills that I think we need to develop to be able to have meaningful applications.”

From Albania to MIT

Before she ever touched a robot or wrote code, Schneider was an accomplished young classical pianist in Albania. When she discovered her passion for robotics at age 13, she applied some of the skills she had learned while playing piano.

“I think on some fundamental level, when I was a pianist, I thought constantly about my motor dynamics as a human being, and how I execute really complex skills but do it over and over again at the top of my ability,” Schneider says. “When it came to robotics, I was building these robotic arms that also had to operate at the top of their ability every time and do really complex tasks. It felt kind of similar to me, like a fun crossover.”

Schneider joined her high school’s robotics team as a middle schooler, and she was so immediately enamored that she ended up taking over most of the coding and building of the team’s robot. She went on to win 14 regional and national awards across the three teams she led throughout middle and high school. It was clear to her that she’d found her calling.

NerdXing wasn’t Schneider’s first experience building new technology. At just 16, she built an app meant to connect English-speaking volunteers from her international school in Tirana, Albania, to local charities that only posted jobs in Albanian. By last year, the platform, called VoluntYOU, had 18 ambassadors across four continents. It has enabled volunteers to give out more than 2,000 burritos in Reno, Nevada; register hundreds of signatures to support women’s rights legislation in Albania; and help with administering Covid-19 vaccines to more than 1,200 individuals a day in Italy.

Schneider says her experience at an international school encouraged her to recognize problems and solutions all around her.

“When I enter a new community and I can immediately be like, ‘Oh wait, if we had this tool, that would be so cool and that would help all these people,’ I think that’s just a derivative of having grown up in a place where you hear about everyone’s super different life experiences,” she says.

Schneider describes NerdXing as a continuation of many of the skills she picked up while building VoluntYOU.

“They were both motivated by seeing a challenge where I thought, ‘Wait, we have the tech skills to build that. This is something that I can envision the solution to.’ And then I wanted to actually go and make that a reality,” Schneider says.

Robotics with a positive impact

At MIT, Schneider started working in the Biomimetic Robotics Laboratory of Professor Sangbae Kim, where she has now participated in three research projects, one of which she’s co-authoring a paper on. She’s part of a team that tests how robots, including the famous back-flipping mini cheetah, move, in order to see how they could complement humans in high-stakes scenarios.

Most of her work has revolved around crafting controllers, including one hybrid-learning and model-based controller that is well-suited to robots with limited onboard computing capacity. It would allow the robot to be used in regions with less access to technology.

“It’s not just doing technology for technology’s sake, but because it will bridge out into the world and make a positive difference. I think legged robotics have some of the best potential to actually be a robotic partner to human beings in the scenarios that are most high-stakes,” Schneider says.

Schneider hopes to further robotic capabilities so she can find applications that will service communities around the world. One of her goals is to help create tools that allow a surgeon to operate on a patient a long distance away. 

To take a break from academics, Schneider has channeled her love of the arts into MIT’s vibrant social dancing scene. This year, she’s especially excited about country line dancing events where the music comes on and students have to guess the choreography.

“I think it’s a really fun way to make friends and to connect with the community,” she says.